


Fevers

by Saki101



Series: Other Experiments [15]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-10
Updated: 2012-03-10
Packaged: 2017-11-01 17:37:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saki101/pseuds/Saki101
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Side effects of the experiment.</p><p>Excerpt:  John half closed the door, his hand lingering on the handle.  The front door thumped as it shut.  He felt the push of air.  His steps were quick to the window.  He watched Mike cross the road, leaned his forehead against the cool glass.  <i>Maybe the fever’s back already.</i>  John could feel his heartbeat picking up.  <i>I could text him.  He’d come back.</i>  “Come back,” John murmured.  But he wasn’t thinking of Mike.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fevers

**Author's Note:**

> This is a continuation of [The Other Experiments Series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/15644) which forms an AU frame for the [Experiments Series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/15016). _Fevers_ is set after [Immunology](http://archiveofourown.org/works/351512).

“Stay in today. Get some more sleep,” Mike said on the landing in the morning. “Don’t come down. I’ll let myself out.” He turned towards the stairs. “Text me if the fever comes back. In a few cases, it has come back stronger.” John huffed. “I mean it, call me,” Mike repeated, glancing back and waiting until John looked directly at him and nodded. “All right,” Mike said and headed down the stairs. 

John half closed the door, his hand lingering on the handle. The front door thumped as it shut. He felt the push of air. His steps were quick to the window. He watched Mike cross the road, leaned his forehead against the cool glass. _Maybe the fever’s back already._ John could feel his heartbeat picking up. _I could text him. He’d come back._ “Come back,” John murmured. But he wasn’t thinking of Mike.

************ 

Lestrade tapped on the door as he pushed it open. He didn’t wait for an invitation. 

Mrs Hudson brought up tea of an afternoon, watched a little telly with John sometimes. He left the door ajar for her. In the evenings, she was out more than John. He’d doze on the couch with the telly murmuring, his nose pressed into the cushions, to offset the wakeful hours near dawn. Mrs Hudson would look in when she came home, shut the door quietly if John was sleeping.

He heard a man clearing his throat. John tensed, hoped for the miracle, eliminated possibilities. _Not Sherlock, not Mike, not Mycroft, not a stranger. Lestrade_. John looked over his shoulder. _Greg_. John sat up, shook his head, ran his hand over his face.

“Force of habit,” Greg said.

John tilted his head in agreement, his muscles easing.

Lestrade gestured at the nearest chair. “May I?” he said.

John lifted his chin at it, his lips quirking into a shape that wasn't a smile. _Don’t wait to be asked in, but ask to sit._ There hadn’t usually been any time to sit, and when there was, there was time to ask...or to apologise. A bit of everything this visit, John thought. He smiled at that. He’d noticed that he was trying to imitate Sherlock’s thinking, using the word “obviously” more than he ever had. It had hurt the first time he’d heard it said after…then he found his ears pricking up whenever it was said, started using it frequently himself. He could do it at the clinic. No one, except Sarah, would get the connection and it was often appropriate. People did that when they lived together, began using the same words and phrases, references, cadences. _So why not when you died together?_

John refocused his attention on Lestrade, who was waiting patiently, still standing, regarding him. “Tea?” John asked, rising. “Are you off-duty? Something stronger?”

Lestrade held out his hand, indicated that John should sit. “Later maybe.”

John sat and the tension came back. He rotated his neck to ease the pain it brought, waited for Lestrade to sit and continue.

“You know that tip you passed to me, from the homeless girl?” Lestrade asked. John nodded. “I passed it on to Dimmock. It was worth following up, but anything I touch that’s not routine doesn’t proceed very rapidly these days.” Greg looked down at his hands and back up at John. “Maybe I’ll take a beer, if you have one.” 

John got up. Mycroft had probably intervened to make sure Greg didn’t get dismissed or suspended, had done something so John didn’t get charged with assaulting the chief superintendent. That ASBO had disappeared as well. The court date had been cancelled and never rescheduled. No record. Which was good because it would be hard to practice medicine with a criminal record. Maybe Sherlock had fixed the ASBO, but it could have been Mycroft. John didn’t like to think about Mycroft for more than an instant, the train of thought always led somewhere dismal, but he had to admit that Mycroft had done things to lessen the collateral damage. _Damn._ The train had already gone too far. 

Greg followed John into the kitchen, glanced around at the relative lack of scientific equipment. John couldn't give it away, had taken out some of what Mrs Hudson had boxed for a couple experiments of his own. Little experiments on items around the flat, dark hairs, for example. Touching the glassware, looking through the microscope at a sample on a slide brought Sherlock closer. He wouldn't tell the therapist, wasn't going back there anyway. He had only gone once after that first time, to tell her about the job possibility at the clinic, so she wouldn’t set anyone on him. It had been one of the few things Mycroft and Sherlock had wholeheartedly agreed upon. “Fire her,” they had both said. John got the bottles out of the cupboard, grabbed a couple glasses. Lestrade reached around John and took one of the bottles off the counter. John skipped the glass, too. 

“We’ve got the Golem in custody,” Greg said when they sat back down in the sitting room.

John leaned all the way back on the sofa, let the beer bottle settle on his thigh and closed his eyes. The feeling spreading through his chest was so warm. He had given the homeless girl a fifty when she’d handed him the slip of paper. It was extravagant, but he’d had one in his wallet and it’s what Sherlock had given her for information. There was cash to spare. Several private clients’ payments had come into the consulting account. John smiled up at the ceiling. Sherlock had called it that when they had stopped by the bank and John ended up signing papers. “To save you having to borrow my cash card,” Sherlock had said. When the recent payments appeared on their online statement, John had felt vindicated. The clients hadn’t used Sherlock’s…they hadn’t used it as an excuse not to pay. Each one had been like a vote of confidence, thank yous in pounds and pence for what Sherlock had done for them. They didn’t care about the shite in the papers because they’d experienced Sherlock firsthand. Their mysteries had been solved, there had been no magic tricks. And now this. 

“He’s still helping,” John murmured. He hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but Greg wasn’t likely to mind. He’d had the wisdom to consult Sherlock, had the confidence to recognise when someone else could help, unlike… _God._ There was another train John tried not to take. It was so much worse than Mycroft’s.

“There’s more,” Lestrade said, putting down his beer and reaching inside his jacket for an envelope. John opened his eyes and leaned forward. Lestrade opened the envelope and slid the photos from inside across the table towards John. “Seen any of them?” he asked.

John looked at the slim, dark-haired man in the top photo and shook his head. Greg reached across the corner of the table and pushed the first picture aside. John’s beer slammed down on the table. Greg waited, watching John’s face, until John put his hand over it. “Here,” he croaked through his fingers.

“Here?” Greg prompted.

John nodded, let his hand fall away. “Here. Twice. A workman doing repairs. Even with everything happening, I noticed. Hard to miss those tattoos. When I got the call that Mrs Hudson had been shot, I barged in the door and she was standing in the hallway next to him on a ladder. She asked me if Sherlock had sorted everything out with the police and I realised…” John stopped. “Who are they?” he finally asked.

“The Golem traded some information. He had sub-contracted them for Moriarty,” Lestrade tapped the first man’s photo. “This one was for me,” he added. “He was at the Yard, a visiting DI from Manchester, supposedly. We got him at Gatwick last night.” 

John gaped. 

“He looks like the other Manchester bloke. Had all the ID, of course,” Lestrade added. John lifted his eyebrows in question. “The real fellow was on holiday,” Lestrade replied. “Not dead.”

John sighed. “That one was for me?” John asked, pointing at the third photograph. Lestrade nodded, took up his beer and drank while he waited. John thought of the laser dots disappearing from his and Sherlock’s chests when Moriarty snapped his fingers. John squeezed his eyes shut, pictured the body that must have been lying behind Sherlock on the roof. Molly had told him about Moriarty after Sherlock's funeral, before she had hidden her face against Lestrade’s chest. Neither Lestrade or John would have known otherwise. The press had been silent. John had listened to her sobs and stared dry-eyed at Lestrade. Even the hope of killing Moriarty was gone. 

John tried to swallow and failed. He reached for his beer, finished the rest of it. “Sherlock had him and Moriarty shot himself rather than call his assassins off?” John said slowly. 

“It would appear,” Lestrade said. “There were two signals. One could come from Moriarty and one from Sherlock.”

John’s eyes got very wide as he looked back at Lestrade. “Sherlock’s signal was to jump.” 

Greg nodded. “Since Moriarty had a gun, I don’t understand why he didn’t just shoot Sherlock.”

John could hear the voice, strangled with emotion. “I’ll burn the heart right out of you,” he repeated. “It’s what Moriarty said at the pool,” John whispered. “He was willing to die to do that to Sherlock. To make him choose. His life or ours.”

They drank all the beer in the cupboard. The flat was bright when John woke up on the couch. Greg was snoring, stretched out in the chair, his legs over the corner of the coffee table. John made him tea and toast before he left. It was Sunday and there was nowhere John had to be. He spent the rest of the day on the sofa watching the dust motes in the air and wondering what information Sherlock would have been able to deduce from them. When the fever came back, he didn’t text Mike. He stumbled into Sherlock’s bed and slept.


End file.
